over the past few days the shop has become a festering hive of activity. yesturday i finally finished cladding the main shelf and we put up brown paper along one wall, i think this will change our decisions about the space as whole. we are going for a ripped and almost tatty look, to suit the rest of the shop.

martin has been enjoying exhibiting himself in the window as a break from his gluing duties

ellie has been making the signage which will get ‘Shop’ noticed and bring in the customers

ash’s updates to the website make it work much better, gives us the professional air we enjoy having

fred spilling his guts ORGANising everything

me and pat have been making the space

things are going well and i can see a great piece finally insight now!

wednesday i started putting together what i had originally planed for the central shelf and thursday i started cladding it. this was tricky and fiddly and was not satisfying, and was not creating anything which anyone would have been happy with. then after a coffee break me and pat came across some giant sturdy pallets which we put together, and are soo much better for the central shelves, much sturdier, pleasing structure, clean, easier to clad! the question with these ones is whether it is best to clad the whole thing, or leave some structure exposed, to highlight the point of it being found materials, and show the nice lattice of shoddy wood, i’d appreciate others to express opinions when they see them, in order that i can duly ignore them i have built a custom checkout counter, which is a good height and size, which would have been harder to by modding a table.

we then got given some boxes by the sweet shop next door which patrick is putting together into the pick and mix stand, we then noticed that they contained pick and mix sweets, and smelt of sweeties (and not shit like some other cardboard, which is a good size but we might not use due to it smelling up the place). also today i shall convert a box for a fridge into the chiller unit.

so its going well, im just leaving to head down to the shop now and will update you on the progress soon

Although I had truly written off getting a shop todays meeting has given me a little hope, Martin is very optimistic that we will be able to get this one because we no longer have to over come the issue of landlords not wanting to commit us using the space because they are holding out for a long-term tenant… but this short time means we have a lot of planing and work to do in a very short period of time…

However this time although we have started formulating the plan of action I’m gonna wait till we know for sure before I make more substantial proposal because the rest of the project where I have had to plan with many assumptions and guessed parameters just to keep all the whole thing moving in the right direction and then things completely change which has retrospectively made a large amount of my hard work a waste of time…. many budgets… many plans… many emails…

WE GET THIS SPACE AND I WILL BE SO HAPPY… I was to talking to the tutor Tom Chamberlin this evening and showing him some of the products and telling him about our plans and I remember how good it is what we are doing and thought about how amazing its gonna look when we have a shop full of these products… we talk about have some of the products weren’t printed perfectly all over so you could read it all but he said it won’t matter because you already get a sense of what they are about from each other and that they will become just part of a whole experience which is where most of the value or understanding of the piece will come. I also loved sharing with him these excellent design product all of your work, cos it is fucking good and funny and so engaging and tactile. He was asking how we were gonna price things and keep it in the capitalist system of exchange so I then handed him some money and his face light up with astonishment… he said immediately ‘this is good paper’ and told how Patrick had made drawn it and some of the ideas within… he was impressed. The best part was that after talking about the idea of the audience questioning what they could get with it and its value or the value of the products he said ‘that they might choose to keep the note instead’ and I loved that he said it cos he’s not one of us and he could see what i think that the great thing about Patrick’s notes they an seem to posses an intrinsic value because of the realness and because of the craft, skill beauty of the illustration.

I think Patrick we should print another 2 packs because its budgeted for and they are so good.

so let get this shop and make the ‘Shop’ we intend and enjoy all our hard work paying off finally!

Doing this project has been and continues to be an all-consuming experience and if I have learnt anything from working on Project ‘Shop’ with this group then it is this…

to always listen to advice, to try at everything you can do and the things you think you can’t, to learn from every mistake and success, to push your ideas and yourself, to be bold and persistent, to never stop trying and to never stop learning, but most of all I have learnt…

to never give up and be open to CHANGE!

Martin will talk about struggle to secure an empty shop for the event ‘Shop’ and he will let you know the ins and outs and many avenues we have tried to make this community project happen…. but to cut it short, even working with Bournemouth Council and Bournemouth Chamber of Trade and Commerce we haven’t got a location available to us in Bournemouth to do it!

So the Bournemouth community art event known as ‘Shop’ dies!

but a new ‘Shop’ is conceived and growing, it has all the fun, excitement and interaction of the old one but it will be in LONDON!

WOO!

Thanks to the wonderful female artist duo The Girlswe have the chance to revive ‘Shop’ in ﻿Selfridges Ultralounge in Oxford Street, which The Girls are taking over for the whole month of April!

Outside the BBC in Southampton. Time for a drink to celebrate our bumbling interview!

radio_solent_interview.mp3 listen here to us talking about Project ‘Shop’ in an interview with Katie Martin on the Community Chest segment of her show. Plus hear what the judge has to say about our endeavour when she awards us £250 for making community work to engage the local public in fun and conversation.

I’m Fred, one of the artist in OutsideIN Collective and this is the first entry of weekly updates on the developement of Project ‘Shop’.

So this week has been very busy and full of ups and downs, just like most week since we began working on this project full-time in January. Its been a week of designing, printing and rain… with some disappointment!

Making ‘Shop’ Happen!

Martin has been hard at work on the phone and email each day contacting various landlords and local officials continuing our ongoing fight to get hold of an empty shop unit, so we can actually do the event in may! It is as ever an up hill struggle… even though there are many empty units around… we have council support… everyone is very positive about the idea… and even with the offer of money and advertising many leads have gone dead… some just couldn’t commit till April and this is too long for us, because we need to have the space so we know what cardboard shelves to make and more importantly to get posters and flyers made to get people to experience ‘Shop’. It is hard to not let it bring us down… we do what is suggested to us but with each success like getting £250 from the radio there seem to come another closed-door or hurdle.

But we continue to spin many plates of this project in hope. At the moment there are 2 possible shop locations left in Bournemouth and the chance we could do it in Poole, but this week we will push to get a space or start on top-secret plan B. (whatever that will be)

Designing: Many designs are flowing from the groups… ‘Ultra upgrade’ ‘legit-chew’ ‘Placebo’ and many more, and they are all really good and will make engaging talking points… different subjects and themes… but all beautifully design subversion of products with a juicy layer of cultural referencing and humour!

I am really excited to see how people respond to them and what conversation comes, this is my greatest interest and its this that keeps me going!

Printing: As easter break is approaching and we won’t be able to use the studio for a few weeks, so we set the target of printing 250 products this and next week to bring the total number of products for the ‘Shop’ to approximately 1300… that’s quite a big challenge… this week we only managed 100+ products as we wanted to make sure the new designs were as good as they could be and had problem getting silk screen exposed

but NEXT WEEK we will PRINT LIKE MAD to get 300 products printed!

ALSO THIS WEEK

We have been working on product Ad storyboards, talking the film students who are helping us and set the shoot date for next friday… just need to find the actors and get the props made!

We had another fun workshop at Stitch at 60 Million Postcards, its was a good night with great music and lots of cakes… to many cakes and some strange cardboard dressed men!

Ellie continued Fund raising by selling the wonderful Mooshie Taboo T-shirts and bags at STITCH and Cowabunga at The Winchester, we still have many more beautiful designs for you to buy!

Fun at prop workshop!

Thats it for now, check back soon as we will be uploading the BBC radio Solent interview that we bumble our way through. Plus we are currently setting up an OutsideIN youtube channel to get up all funny videos from the Project ‘Shop’ so far and playlists of the research we’ve been laughing at!

fredx

Get involved or find out more: email projectshop@outsideincollective.com

Long time no see countrymen- we have a piece of press devotion, well, attention anyway- in the form of Bournemouth University’s student run newspaper. With details of when we plan to run project ‘Shop’ and a positive outlook on what we want to achieve; Adam Parris-Long has summed up the project quite nicely (or was it a quote from us?)…

“Through this public accessibility, the team hope to examine the differences between what a consumer buys and what they actually get”

Project ‘Shop’ will be starring at 60 Million Post Cards’ very own Stitch!, a night sure to get your creative juices flowing while you enjoy a beer or few.
So come down to Post Cards from 6pm on Wed 17th of Feb where the Project ‘Shop’ team will be holding workshops, inviting you to design products to be featured in ‘Shop’!

Best designs will get a pint on us!

Mooshie Taboo will also have a stall there, so come and check out our designs which have been hand-printed onto tshirts and bags for you to purchase.